The variant of Fatty Bolger is a card that I wanted to work for so long, but it is hard to argue that the is quite underwhelming which is a shame considering his (relatively) important role in getting the hobbits out of the Shire. I am happy to say that this Fatty Bolger does not feel like the hindrance of his incarnation. He is in fact a good hero.

Let's talk stats first. Ok, so the stats leave something to be desired. Fatty Bolger has the same stats as Fatty Bolger which are not geat by any means. 1 and 1 mean he won't be contributing much to questing and attacking. The 2 and 3 means he can be used as a decent defender with cards such as Staff of Lebethron and Hobbit Cloak. His can be further increased by cards such as Bill the Pony and Boots from Erebor. It is worth noting that he has nearly the same stats as Bilbo Baggins, and all the same points regarding his stats as described on the Bilbo page apply here.

The stats aren't great, but does he have an ability to compensate for the subpar stats? Yes! Indeed he does.

Basically the ability is to raise your threat by 4 and exhaust Fatty to CANCEL a non-unique enemy just revealed and add it to the victory display. Everyone and their mother should know how strong card cancellation is with cards like A Test of Will, Hasty Stroke, Eleanor, A Stout Heart, and The Door is Closed! are. Also note that the cancelled card is not replaced. In single-player this means effectively no cards are revealed for the questing phase. In multiplayer, this means one less card is revealed. An incredibly useful ability.

Now part of the cost to use the ability is to exhaust Fatty which isn't really much of an ask as his stats aren't great anyways. His ability has obvious synergy with the victory display archetype. He provides an easy way to put an early card into the victory display. Using this ability has many benefits for these decks. (Assuming that the enemy chucked in the victory display shares a trait with other enemies) Rossiel gets a +2, The Door is Closed! receives an eligible target to be cancelled, Keen as Lances has its cost reduced by 1, Buckland Shirriff can be put into play for cheap, Horn-call of Buckland can give an engaged enemy -1 and -1 and ready the attached hero, and Woodland Sentry has a potential target to discard. So many options are opened up from one enemy placed in the victory display.

Another thing to note is that Fatty starts the game at 5 instead of 7. This makes his ability effectively raise your threat by 2 to use. (If Éowyn had a similar cost, she would be much more balanced). Now in my experience, it is generally best to use Fatty's ability sooner rather than later to get sooner use out of the victory display cards. Starting the game at -2 makes it much easier to play secrecy cards such as Resourceful, Risk Some Light, Out of the Wild, Fear! Fire! Foes!, and Needful to Know. Effectively, it allows for easy secrecy for 1-2 rounds before we activate the ability to get some of these cards out.

Fatty Bolger is a success. He has a very strong ability to cancel an enemy and allows for easier play of secrecy cards. The art is incredible as well (with equally fun favour text).

Sidenote: Fatty also works well in traaditional hobbit decks as they tend to struggle with early combat which Fatty solves. He does have stiff competition for the hobbit hero slot with Pippin and Folco Boffin. While both of these are probably better choices, Fatty is still a very serviceable option.

I must admit: I was not particularly impressed with this card upon release. It was kinda overshadowed by the other trap cards in this cycle such as Celador who makes questing easier and provides a consistent means of threat reduction, It Should Be Spared which allows you to move your traps from weak enemies, and finally Spring the Trap which allows to get a ranger ally in for (potentially) cheaper and after encounter cards have been revealed.

For all of these, the use and improvements were fairly easy to understand. With Live Bait however, this was not the case for me. Blanking the text box of an enemy is undeniably useful, of course, but just how useful is not obvious to those who have not used the card yet. Anyone who uses the card Revealed in Wrath or Thrór's Key knows how useful enemy text box blanking is. Seriously, how often are you in a situation where you don't know how to deal with an enemy soley because of the text box? For me, it's not uncommon. (I woud also like to point out that Live Bait blanks the text box until the end of the ROUND while Revealed in Wrath does until the end of the phase. Allthough, I feel that this is justified because Live Bait is more restricted in using it.)

In addition to the text blanking, it also requires that we attach a unattached trap to that enemy which triggers Celador for a -1 or ready and Damrod for a card. Note that this allows this card to function as a way to move unattached traps to engaged enemies which is quite useful for traps like Ambush, Entangling Nets, and Outmatched. This is also great for the Emyn Arnen Ranger as it allows us to give an enemy a trap before questing to get the + if there was no eligible enemies. It can also be used with ally Faramir to give an enemy a trap, play Faramir, engage that enemy, blank its text box, and deal 4 damage to it.

Ok, so the text blanking is great, but what else is there to the card? Well, there is a restriction that you must have an unattached trap in play. This leaves us with a few scenarios when this card would ideally be used.

1. Planning Phase - Because the blanking lasts until the end of the round, we can use it on the enemy before questing. This allows us to play a trap unattached, blank an enemy in the staging area (or engaged with a player), then attach that trap to the enemy! Normally the traps have to wait until the questing phase to attach and you have no control over what it attaches to. This allows both for us to control exactly which enemy gets a trap as well as the benefit of blanking the text box. This is very useful for traps such as Followed, Poisoned Stakes, and especially Ranger Spikes.
2. Encounter or Combat Phases - If no enemies were revealed from the encounter deck this round (admittedly quite rare in multiplayer games), then we can use this to move traps to engaged enemies to make combat easier.

All in all, this card has been the unsung hero in many of my trap-based games. It blanks enemy text boxes and allows for the freedom to choose what a trap will attach to. The restriction of playing is fairly minimal for trap decks, and is justified for this card. And you get all of this for a cost of 0! If you aren't currently using in your trap decks, you should. You won't be dissapointed. It is definately my favourite new trap-based card that ALEP has introduced. Wonderful job, ALEP team!

I recently played this in a 2-player fellowship in a Prince Imrahil deck that had both Fornost Bowman and Marksman of Lórien in it. I noticed that the Bowman and Marksman are both Ranged allies that cost 3. I compared the two and realized, if you're not playing the Dúnedain playstyle of trying to keep enemies engaged with you (which I wasn't), then the Marksman is much better than the Bowman - you don't need to do any work to give it high and it has a useful enters-play ability. But, if you are playing a Dúnedain deck that cares about that playstyle, then the Bowman is much better - not only can you reliably get it to 3 or sometimes even more, but it also has the Dúnedain trait which is much more easily taken advantage of, such as by using Heir of Valandil to bring it out much more easily.

I have a major beef with this card. There is space for flavor text, and yet there is none. Have your read The Battle of the Pelennor Fields chapter recently? From the moment Dernhelm reveals herself:

"But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes."

I imagine this must have been in the art brief. I know there wouldn't be room for the whole quote, but a missed opportunity for including either the first or last sentence.

But it's a great card, I like it particularly on allies. Or, especially thematically, Éowyn with a Golden-Round Shield

Great addition to the ally pool, especially the Rohan ally pool. Having the Devoted keyword, he can be added to pure Rohan (or Warrior) decks even without access. His ability can be very useful in taking down beefier enemies. I have made specially good use of him with Éomer. Even when you have Gúthwinë attached to him, he will still often be unable to take down those enemies in the staging area that you really want dead. But with this guy, he can one-shot most of the enemies in the game; and thanks to Gúthwinë’s effect, you can return Deeping Bowman to your hand after the attack to repeat the trick. Granted, you’ll have to invest some resources to do that every round, but that’s a nice design bonus, I think: If you’re playing a mono- deck, you’ll have plenty of resource acceleration anyway (because Éomer is already eating up one resource every round), but if you’re mixing in other spheres (like Tactics), you’ll prefer other options (and have less resource acceleration). Before this guy, Éomer was hard to make good use of in a deck without Tactics access to cards like Spear of the Mark, but with Deeping Bowman, he has received some much-needed mono- support. Of course, our friendly fellow is also a nice addition to any other deck able to play him. You can always choose to either attack with him (and since he has the Ranged keyword, he will have a target more often than not), or, if you’re down more than 1 , you can discard him so your other attackers can hopefully finish the job. He also has 1 , which is always nice (and being Rohan, he can be boosted by cards like Astonishing Speed). A great addition to the card pool, and bonus points for giving new life to an otherwise difficult-to-use type of deck.